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April 22 to April 28, 2020
Why deacons are important in parishes
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Reg No. 1920/002058/06 No 5183
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R12 (incl VAT RSA)
Centenary Jubilee Year
How to pray the Family Rosary
World Youth Day to be delayed
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Burglars rob, vandalise and desecrate cathedral BY ERIN CARELSE
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APE TOWN’S St Mary’s cathedral was broken into and vandalised in the early hours of Saturday morning, at a time when churches are closed to the public in terms of the national Covid-19 lockdown. Cathedral administrator Fr Rohan Smuts said his worst fears were realised when he received a call on Saturday informing him that the mother church of South Africa had been burgled. “It was absolutely heartbreaking when I came into the sacristy and looked into the cathedral. Where the tabernacle was, there was nothing. It was just utter destruction,” Fr Smuts told The Southern Cross. The unknown persons broke into the cathedral through a small window on the side of the Blessed Sacrament chapel. According to Fr Smuts, the thieves tore the tabernacle to pieces to open it, and then desecrated it and Eucharist. It was taken off its mounting, “and that isn’t easy at all as it’s a fixed structure”, Fr Smuts said. The tabernacle was left upside down. When Fr Smuts pried the doors open, he saw no vessels. But his first concern was for the consecrated hosts. “The consecrated hosts from the ciborium had been left inside the tabernacle, but the host from the pyx had been removed,” the
St Mary’s cathedral’s Blessed Sacrament chapel before Saturday’s burglary (left) and afterwards. The burglars stole four of the six silver candlesticks, among other valuable items, and damaged and desecrated the tabernacle. (Photos courtesy St Mary’s cathedral) priest said. Other stolen items include the church’s microphones, four of the six silver candelabra that were next to the tabernacle, a gold-plated chalice, two gold-plated patens, and money from the votive candles box, donations and Southern Cross sales. Fr Smuts said when the nationwide lockdown was implemented, the cathedral parish
didn’t think it would be necessary to remove anything from the Church. “When the lockdown happened, we had Mass, and that was it. It was instantaneous; we didn’t think then that we needed to remove these things,” he said. The cathedral was connected by alarm to an armed response service. But the armed security officer dispatched to the premises after
the church alarm went off was directed by the monitoring company to the old presbytery office instead of the cathedral. The security officer left a note, which armed response personnel usually do, to say he had found nothing out of the ordinary— but, of course, he was at the incorrect place. After the police took statements, Fr Smuts Continued on page 3
A letter from church mice How you can help T The Southern Cross HE Catholic Sentinel, newspaper of the US archdiocese of Portland in Oregon shared a letter it received to offer Catholic readers a little lighthearted break amid the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic. An open letter from church mice: Amid the pandemic, you have prayed for doctors, nurses, grocery store workers, priests and religious. You even, amazingly, invoke grace upon politicians before remembering us, who are right under your noses. We church mice always made a good living from the crisps which the Nelson kids dropped in the fourth pew during 10am Mass. And we realise the holy water was holy, but it also was delicious and refreshing. Now we are doing without, and you hardly seem to care. Missing Holy Week was a big hit for us. In addition to the ecstasy of nibbling on succulent dropped palms, we consider Palm Sunday our most entertaining of the year. Those feisty Nelson boys call it “Sword Fight Sunday” and regularly thrill us with palmy parries and thrusts. We church mice refer to it as “Eye Poke Sunday” and would
roll with laughter in our dens as we’d recount inadvertent facial assaults between pews. We guess those palms are hard to manage safely. Next year, best leave them on the ground for us. We’ll take care of them. Other than dodging drops of hot wax from all your little candles, we are impressed at your Easter Vigils. For the record, we prefer the dark part, since we must scamper into our holes when the lights come up. It’s mouse code. We may not have souls, but we can sense that something happens for you at Mass, something we don’t notice in your houses, bars and garages. For one thing, you almost never eat cheese puffs at church. For another, you seem connected to something bigger than you, a state we admire. We may be only mice, but we hear when you say that your Christ is king of the universe, not just of humans. I guess Jesus is there for us all, even those who don’t look like us—though tails and whiskers would be an improvement on you. We mice pray in our own way and we pray fervently that you return to Mass soon, especially the Nelson kids.
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iD you know that The Southern Cross is entirely independent and unsubsidised, surviving on revenue from sales and advertising — and the kind support of our readers? The Southern Cross has survived for nearly 100 years on strength of tight financial management and the great sacrifices by its small, loyal staff. But now the survival of our only national Catholic weekly is in great danger. The closure of our churches in the national lockdown has robbed us of our main source of income: sales at the church door. We have made the weekly edition available for FREE on our website, going online every Friday at 11:00. That way, all Catholics will have access to the Catholic weekly. Subscribers get their edition on Wednesdays, with premium content for the duration of the lockdown. We are asking those who take up our offer of the free newspaper to make a donation, or to subscribe. An encouraging number of people have already done so. We remain positive that by God’s grace we can survive this crisis. But that also requires YOUR help.
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